College Sports

The changing world of college sports

MEN: Reduction of several sports can't all be traced to Title IX factor

Boulder - Two years ago, Marek Dvorak traveled more than 5,000 miles from Prague to Boulder to play tennis and attend school at the University of Colorado. Growing up in the Czech Republic, he never had heard of the NCAA or Title IX or the term "nonrevenue sports."

While working toward a degree in business, Dvorak recently learned an important lesson about college athletics in America. His university, facing rising costs and mounting debt, joined the ranks of dozens of other universities that cut a nonrevenue sport to help make ends meet.

Getting the ax at Colorado could be men's tennis. CU's team today stands one win away from the NCAA round of 16 being held at Stanford next weekend.

A 4-1 first-round win Saturday over Arizona advanced the 23rd-ranked Buffs (20-8) to the second round, where they will meet No. 10 UCLA (18-5) today for the right to go to Stanford. It's the highest-ranked men's tennis team in CU history, but, barring an 11th-hour reprieve, it could be its last.

"I think it shows that they don't really care how their program is doing," Dvorak said. "They don't see. Maybe if it was getting worse or something, but we're getting better every day. They don't care."

Dvorak has lots of company in his misery. He can go back 25 years. The NCAA landscape is strewn with discarded wrestling and men's volleyball programs, unused floor exercise mats and empty swimming pools.

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In Division I, men's gymnastics has gone from 59 programs in 1981-82 to 17, men's swimming from 181 to 141 and wrestling from 146 to 86. Some sports have kept their numbers steady only because of schools jumping up to Division I, where schools are required to sponsor a minimum of 16 sports to maintain their status.

The number of women's nonrevenue programs continues to climb. Nowhere has it shot up more than in soccer, where the 22 women's teams in 1981-82 have increased to 301.

The cynic - or sexist - would equate the decline of men's nonrevenue sports with the 1972 advent of Title IX, the federal-mandated legislation requiring equal opportunity for female athletes. But it's more complicated than that.

What isn't complicated is that the Colorado men's tennis program had until Saturday to raise $1 million to save the program. In seven weeks it raised close to $600,000, nearly doubling its yearly budget. Unless CU athletic director Mike Bohn softens, throw a black-and-gold racket cover into the NCAA's scrapheap of men's programs laid to rest.

Then again, Bohn does like a winner. More than 300 pledged money. More than 1,000 people wrote letters. About 20 people made the trip to Los Angeles.

"I think (Saturday's) performance and how much the guys love the program, that helps," Colorado tennis coach Sam Winterbotham, the Big 12 co-coach of the year, said Saturday. "We're as good as any team that ever played at CU."

Bohn juggles variables

Bohn sat in his office, precariously perched on the edge of his chair. On the job 13 months, he's on edge in more ways than one.

A looming $7 million to $8 million budget deficit, $4 million of which resulted from the contract settlement of fired football coach Gary Barnett and the hiring of Dan Hawkins and his staff, led to him axing men's tennis, which saved the department about $325,000 annually. Cutting 12 other staff positions brought the savings to about $1 million.

Like Dvorak, Bohn isn't alone in his plight. The NCAA estimates that only 20 Division I-A athletic departments operate in the black.

"That's 20," Sweet said. "Not 20 percent. Twenty."

Costs continue to rise in everything from tuition to travel. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, average tuition costs since 1980 have jumped from $8,500 to $21,235 for private schools and from $2,000 to $5,491 for public, including a 37 percent jump the past 10 years. That puts an extra burden on marketing departments to sell more football and basketball tickets. Football and men's basketball typically generate an average of 85 percent of a Division I athletic department's revenue.

"As their load continues to increase by financial aid costs, gasoline costs, all the other costs that are associated with it," Bohn said, "they don't have the ability to carry it all."

And the programs that get hurt usually are men's nonrevenue programs. One of the Title IX requirements is the percentage of women's athletic participants should be proportionate to the student body, within 3 to 5 percent. With football getting 85 scholarships and participation usually topping 100, women's participation numbers must be kept high.

Explain that to a men's tennis player packing his bags. The NCAA allows 4 1/2 scholarships for men's teams and eight for women.

"It screws us," said Eric Molnar, the first Buff to make the NCAA singles tournament in 10 years. "Title IX has a little to do with that. I don't think it's all that fair to give eight scholarships they can't fill."

It's not just the major powers that are feeling the pinch. Last year, Vermont cut men's golf, men's swimming and men's and women's tennis, while bringing back men's indoor and outdoor track.

Vermont does not have football, but even a 2005 trip to the second round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament couldn't breathe life into uncompetitive programs draining a small revenue stream.

"The total savings was $150,000," Vermont AD Robert Corran said. "But for us the bigger savings is we're not going to have to generate another $750,000, which is what it would cost to be competitive."

Corran subscribes to the theory that more isn't always more. At Colorado, approximately $10.8 million of the $38.2 million athletic budget went to football in 2005. Texas' overall budget is approaching $90 million. Vermont's is $13 million, and its out-of-state tuition is $32,000 a year.

Corran worked at California for a year and received his Ph.D. at Ohio State. He knows big-time collegiate sports.

To him, they equate to big problems. "Athletes don't need $5 million locker rooms, seven sweat suits and police escorts," he said. "If anything, we're creating pampered, spoiled brats. Coaches' salaries in some places are outrageous. I got into this because I wanted to be involved in education.

"Where do million-dollar salaries, particularly when that million-dollar salary potentially is taking away from an athlete in another sport, how is that educational?"

Bohn isn't a believer in the arms race, either, but said, "I am a believer in enhancing the sports that generate the most amount of revenue for the institution."

Wrestlers battle trend

So what can be done? Plenty, some say.

Legendary wrestler Dan Gable, a 1972 Olympic champion, has returned to coaching at Iowa and points to his sport's National Wrestling Coaching Association. It has gone from a part-time, ineffective governing body to a heavily funded activist group with five full-time members campaigning to stop the bloodletting of wrestling programs. The result has been the reinstatement of 12 programs since 1999, plus the addition of Utah Valley State at the Division I level.

"We're the example of how to step up and keep programs from being dropped," Gable said.

NCAA president Myles Brand has started a Presidential Task Force to show athletic programs how to better use resources. To the NCAA, less is more.

"Revenue producing," Sweet said, "isn't always profit producing."

Winterbotham awaits Bohn's return from his daughter's graduation in Idaho to make the final determination, which should come early this week. If the answer remains no, Winterbotham will pursue an opening at Minnesota and Molnar will start hitting the phones. The native of Guelph, Ontario, has already transferred once, from Alabama last year. He hasn't decided where to go, nor is he looking forward to it.

"It's a big hassle to go through," he said. "It's tough to go into a new school, not knowing anyone or anything."

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